“μ” Trek, Day 1: The western lands of Torres del Paine greeted us with smells of charred wood and scenes of black ash, remnants of a tourist’s mishap when burning waste at a campsite at Grey Glacier. To the south, we could see smoke rising in the distance. Our route was safely finished smoldering, but remote areas of the Park still suffered in flames.
Today, my thoughtful, easy going inspiration of a husband shares his write up of a recent interview with one of Bolivia’s finest leaders. Both men are humble and sincere, less the type to write for the world and more the type to be out living their convictions on local streets, day after day.
I’m grateful to share their story with you. -Bethany
A Man of the People: My Interview with Public Servant Rolando Mendoza
By Ted Rydmark
While in Bolivia, we spent a week on work-exchange with the Mendoza-Donlon Family.
Rolando Mendoza has extensive experience as a public servant. He is the former mayor of Mallasa (a suburb town of La Paz), the former Head of Social Services for the Municipality of La Paz (metro population 2.3 million), and is the current Person in Charge of Planning and Investment for the Ministry of Planning for the Bolivian Government.
When he was elected Mayor of Mallasa, he was the first non-party “man of the people” to serve in that office. His success as mayor resulted in his appointment a Head of Social Services for La Paz.
I took the opportunity sit down with Rolando and ask him about his experiences as a civic politician. Special thanks to Bethany for recording the conversation and to Rolando’s wife, Emma, for translating.
Ted: What was most challenging about working as head of Social Services in La Paz?
Rolando: It was most challenging to really know what was going on and to develop plans to transform the situation and make it better. Because we were working for the benefit of young people, children, and old people, I had this desperation to really make their lives better and make an impact – fast. I desired that my programs would become institutionalized and consolidated and would last over time.
Rolando’s position lasted four years, during which time he accomplished much. As the Head of Social Services for the Municipality of La Paz, Rolando’s responsibilities included five broad areas: Sports, Health (including infrastructure, equipment, and future planning), Education (including the planning and building of schools), Citizen Rights (equivalent to Civil Rights), and Citizen Security. During this time he was directly responsible for over 800 municipal staff. Continue Reading…
Welcome, friends, to our corner of the web! On this Leap Day, we’re hosting our second {digital} dinner party as a way to take a pause and enjoy an exchange with fellow travelers we’ve met through Twitter. For the backstory, see #RTWdinnerparty: Friends, foods, and table talk from travels around the world.
Pull a chair to the table and enjoy! When you’re done here, head on over progressive-dinner-style to our friends’ #RTWdinnerparty dishes and stories. Link roundup at the bottom of the post.
{Meet and Mingle} Bethany and Ted, here. Welcome to our dinner party. We’re just eight weeks into our journey around the globe; this hot on the heels (ha!) of eight years of dreams and schemes and plans.
As landscape architect and social worker, we’re taking time during travel to experience and share observations about the world through the lens of compassionate care for the planet and its people. At each destination, Ted puts new friends at ease, investing in conversations and teasing out details; Bethany heads up writing and photography to wrestle with tensions, catalog milestones, and share with readers an honest look at life across cultures.
Beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina is temporarily home base.
We arrived on Valentine’s Day, via a harrowing airplane ride from southern Patagonia (see Daily Travel Journal Day #41). We’ve paused for a bit and set up house in a cozy little apartment, complete with seafoam green glass shower tiles, cement kitchen countertops, and a solitary steak knife. (Details forthcoming on the cutlery.)
{Dinner Specialty} Summer Salads
We could <insert salad photo> right here and be through, but, well, you’ve seen Portlandia, right? It’s not all a joke. You’re going to hear the story of the food before it’s served. Continue Reading…
Our final morning on the long road south between Bolivia and Chile, we awoke at 4:30am to make the geysers by sunrise and Aguas Termales hot springs by breakfast. The kindness and tech-savvy of our driver, Edgar, allowed us to plug in iPods to the speaker system and create a crowd sourced soundtrack to our travels…
We alternated between The Avett Brothers, Mika, Josh Garrels and more as the sights melted into the rear view mirror, and we tried to forget the difficult night behind us. Continue Reading…
Sometimes, I don’t do my research.
I sign us up for random 4×4 tours through the middle of nowhere South America and, aside from the Salt Flats, haven’t the foggiest idea of what we’re about to see through the car window…
Sometimes, the surprise is worth the negligence.
Day two of our three-day-expedition meant little to me when I saw the route on the tiny 4×6 map we were given at the outset: tiny mountain symbols, a few “Lagunas,” dashed lines, and some lingering memories of beautiful flamingo snapshots from a fellow blogger.
Sometimes, as we travel, time is spent on today. The people, the places, the tasks at hand.
Sometimes, we trust that at a certain point, neglecting the planning and research means that tomorrow really will take care of itself.
How jaw-dropping to encounter plants and wildlife, mountain scenes and colored lakes, high country snow (the first snow of our Brazilian companions’ lives!), and approach each new bend in the road with wide eyed anticipation and wonder.
Sometimes, we have no idea what to expect. And that’s when travel comes alive.
Enjoy the peek at beautiful, wild, surprising altiplano of Southern Bolivia…
Welcome to Sights from Our Adventures in the City, episode two. See Lima to catch up on episode one. It’s riveting entertainment, let me assure you.
This post’s title makes sense mostly in the non-sensical context of Kilban’s lines:
Piggly, wiggly, bird bath, pie
Cat hips, fish lips, poke you in the eye!
…
Aardvark, percolator, five-cent cigar
Rhinestones, soup bones, midgets in a jar…
Please, pull up a seat and follow along our wanderings in downtown La Paz, Bolivia…
Continue Reading…
Through connecting with a welcoming Workaway host family, we spent a little over a week living in Jupapina, Bolivia (about thirty minutes outside La Paz), earning room and board in exchange for flexing muscles of body and mind.
During our all-too-short time in Bolivia, we’ve been witness to unsettling destruction of natural resources: homes perched on unstable ground, bulldozers wreaking havoc on naturally stable terrain, and creation of geological chaos in the name of development.
What a treat to meet this inspiring family and engage in finding land management solutions.
Emma and Rolando with their charming kiddos: Bell and David…
Our hosts, Emma and Rolando, have dedicated their family and careers to bettering Bolivia. Emma relocated from England after spending time with international development agencies working in South America and Africa and is now involved in projects providing activities, meals, and education for children of working class parents unable to afford daycare and in community development projects benefitting indigenous people groups. Rolando ran against the political shoe-ins and won as an independent candidate for Mayor of nearby Mallasa, enacting many land preservation measures, developing public recreation lands, introducing art into public works projects, and advocating for the needs of the people, and later he was appointed and served as head of Social Services for all of La Paz.
Site: The Mendoza-Donlan Residence in Jupapina, Bolivia
The sky isn’t Photoshopped and the house really is that brilliant color. Light is amazing in Bolivia.
Emma and Rolando built their home four years ago in the beautiful Bolivian countryside, but their neighbors’ poor land management left them with an incredibly unstable property adjacent to their own. Their offer to purchase the land was accepted, and they’ve been working for the past few seasons to mitigate the damages and have plans to eventually develop the site as a tent and yurt campground serving La Paz.
As a landscape architect, I offered my skills to help with site master planning and Ted and I are both aided in filling holes, planting trees, cleaning out sand traps, and generally leaving the {future} campsite cleaner than we found it.
In one week’s time, we held client design meetings, worked out existing conditions and site analysis, spent time on concept and schematic designs, and reviewed design development options before committing to the final master plan. Continue Reading…
Many thanks to our traveling friends Chris and Tawny at Captain and Clark for nominating us to complete the A-Z Travel Questionnaire. (It’s been, um, a month since the invitation, but we’ve been doing some very difficult research to prepare answers for the questions…)
A: Age in which you first internationally traveled.
T: Mexico, age 14.
B: Mexico, age 3.
B: Best (foreign) beer and where.
T: Pliny the Elder in Portland, Oregon at the Horse Brass Pub. Okay, okay it’s not foreign, but it would be foreign to me right now since I’m in Chile.
B: Speight’s Pride of the South in New Zealand. Not because it’s delicious beer, but because it’s associated with such good memories.
C: Cuisine (favorite)
T: Anything pickled.
B: Locally sourced, lovingly made foods. I’m a self confessed Food Nerd.
D: Destinations (favorite) and why? Least favorite and why?
T: Favorite – Bolivia because it’s cheap and chill. Hawaii, cause it’s warm all night, too. Least Favorite – San Pedro de Atacama, Chile: Tourist Trap with a capital “T”
B: Favorite – New Zealand, South Island especially, but the country as a whole is tops: friendly people, beautiful scenery, and terrific natural resource management. Least Favorite – I’m in too good of a mood to pick one right now.
Beautiful Beech Forests in New Zealand – Bethany’s Favorite Country
E: Event you experienced that made you say “wow”
T: Seeing Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate at dawn.
B: Seeing scenes from my college computer desktop come to life in front of my eyes as I explored Klondike Corner in the Waimakariri Valley in Arthur’s Pass National Park, Canterbury, New Zealand. Continue Reading…
Today, my best friend Ted turns 30. The following is an excerpt from his in “Happy Birthday to Me: A 30 year Man ifesto (of sorts)”
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
Today I am 30.
I don’t feel 30, or even 29. I still feel like a child. When will I feel like a man? I’m not sure if I will ever feel like a man, or be one.
When I officially became a man (the first time at 18), I was in the darkest place of my life. Depression has a way of making you feel like you’ve experienced everything before, even if you haven’t. So there was nothing new under the sun. And still isn’t.
Traveling the world should feel exhilarating, like new lifetimes folded within new lifetimes, transformative.
And some days it is.
And most days I walk a knife’s edge between the vast love of God and the vast chasm of loneliness that seeks to engulf me with despair.
Is it better to have God in hand? Or be constantly desperate to merely catch a glimpse of him from day to day (for fear that I will die if I don’t)?
I’m not sure what I expected to find here, across the globe, that I didn’t find at home. Something better? Or more of the same?
Nevermind.
I care about so much less than I did when I was younger. By less, I mean a smaller number of things overall. But at the same time I care much more for those smaller number of things.
And so at age 30, I will take a moment to share my thoughts on some of those things with you.
the Bigger love
I feel safer than ever before — safer because I know Love just a little better — safer because there is something Bigger pressing up against my being.
Around the world, travelers everywhere are seeking good things: adventure, excitement, meaning, purpose, a good time, spirituality, the right kind of power, each other, place. With all their hearts they are seeking something Bigger than themselves.
Some are content with what they find. And some are driven to keep looking. Bethany and I are no different. We are committed to Jesus and his church, and yet, like every other traveler, we are seeking all of the same thrills, something Bigger. Not bigger than Jesus, mind you. But bigger than our thoughts about Jesus. And so we are on the same journey, not necessarily headed in the same direction, but seeking essentially the same thing. I have great respect for our fellow travelers. It’s a courageous endeavor…
Continue Reading at emoti:i.
Happy, happy, happy birthday, to the “nicest boy I ever met” (-Bethany’s journal, age 15)
Thank you for being my traveling partner, my life companion, and a true example of faith, hope, and love. Life is so rich with you in it!
About half way through our stay in Bolivia, I took up the invitation to attend a Women Who W{h}ine get together in La Paz. Each month, marvelous ladies of the city (expats and locals working for NGOs, designers and artisans running their own businesses, World Bank employees, and tour company owners) bring a bottle of something delicious and spend an evening of drink and discussion in the company of other interesting minds.
In that spirit, here is our own whine and wine take on Bolivia:
WHINE: Border Crossings, Long-Haul Transportation, Stormwater Management, and Loopholes for Transgenic Crops
To make our exit from Peru, we bussed from Cusco to Puno (complete with overnight stay in sketch-city-hostel) and then followed the lake shore of Titicaca toward the border crossing with Bolivia. As Americans, we forked over $135 each in U.S. Dollars to satisfy the Bolivian government, and receive our entry visas. Continue Reading…
